STOCKTON SEX OFFENDER DOWNLOADED CHILD ABUSE IMAGES
A sex offender who was given the chance to get his life back on track breached a court order within weeks of it being imposed.Andrew Boatwright was back to his old ways within a matter of weeks when a tablet was found hidden under his mattress.
But the 25-year-old was told he squandered the chance given to him by a judge when he downloaded more than 200 child abuse images.
Caroline McGurk, prosecuting, said Boatwright used an alias on his Xbox and an incognito browser on the tablet which he had failed to register with his offender manager.
She said: “He failed to volunteer the existence of the Samsung tablet; they later found it hidden under his mattress and indecent images were recovered from it at a later date.” The court heard the defendant was given a 20-month sentence suspended for two years in April this year for three counts of possession indecent images of children, possession of prohibited images and possession of images of extreme pornography.
The defendant was also ordered to sign on the sex offenders’ register and was made subject of a sexual harm prevention order.
Boatwright, of Sorrel Close, Stockton, pleaded guilty to downloading 38 Category A indecent images of children; 58 Category B images; 169 Category C images, three breaches of his sexual harm prevention order and a further charge of breaching his notification requirements between May 10 and September 18 this year.
Judge Jonathan Carroll activated 14 months of Boatwright’s suspended sentence and added a further 20 months for the most recent offences.
Sentencing the defendant to a total of two years and ten months in custody, he said: “You were only 73 days into that order when you committed these offences.
I am certain that you knew full well that you should have disclosed the Samsung tablet to the police otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to hide it under your mattress or failed to disclose it to the police.”
